


Bone Fiddle-Verse Drabbles and Ficlets

by Vulgarweed



Series: The Bone Fiddle [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Anal Sex, Angst, Appalachia, Appalachian Traditions, Bathroom Fixtures Out in the Yard, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Historical - 1970s, Holidays, Inappropriate Use of Graveyards, Inspired by Music, M/M, Major Character Death (not really), Nightmares, North American Wildlife, Period-Typical Homophobia, Rimming, Songfic, Stinklock, Suicidal Thoughts, Switching, Team Switchlock, Veterans, Vietnam War, Violence in a Dream, Wakes & Funerals, West Virginia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:02:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had a mess of these sitting around on my Livejournal, and will likely write more. Odds and sods that don't fit in the larger stories. Each drabble will be its own chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Adventure of the Mustelid Musk

**Author's Note:**

> A double 221B. Another side of rural romance. In which Sherlock might no longer be aromantic, but he's very aromatic.  
> Tiltedsyllogism really wanted to see somebody use that "Stinklock" tag, so here it is.

John froze in his tracks and shook at the sight of Sherlock in the bathtub, pale shoulders and face and spread knees lying limp in the endless redness. Red water dripped and sloshed over the edge.

He tried not to shake so hard with laughter as he aimed his cheap little Kodak and clicked. “Good thing they haven't invented film that captures smell.”

Sherlock jerked his head up and snarled silently. The half-dozen huge cans of tomato juice had done nothing to abate the stench, and now he just smelled like skunk with tomato sauce. He was in one of the old bathtubs in the yard, since John had barred him from the house when he came back steeped in _eau de Mephitis mephitis._

“Tomato juice doesn't _work,_ John,” Sherlock had growled. “It does nothing to break down a thiol compound.” Be that as it may, John had ordered him to strip naked and get in nonetheless — at gunpoint. (A paintball gun, but John still hoped it conveyed just how serious he was about it.)

“It's all over you,” John said incredulously. “Not just your clothes. What were you trying to _do_ to it?”

“They're predators of honeybees,” Sherlock growled, flinging tomato juice from his reeking wet hair. “I'll do anything to protect my beehives.”

*

It wasn't just that Sherlock had come home stinking of skunk spray like a bad dog, trying to walk right into the house as if bringing home an acrid, eye-watering reek was just a normal Sherlock day. (Some things he liked to play with smelled almost as bad and were actually dangerous.) It wasn't just that he didn't even care to change his clothes.

It was that he had the nerve to smell like that _and still be horny._ To come up on John from behind (sneaking was impossible) and grip John's waist and lick the nape of his neck and nip at his ear, as if he had all the right in the world to expect that John would just put out for him – in their bed even, oh _hell_ no.

Sherlock's eyes still goaded him now, ice-blue in the sun, set in that striking face with its red juice streaks . . . and then John just gave up, and swore, and started stripping off his own clothes in a put-upon way. He'd only just figured how to fit his body to Sherlock's in the steep old tub and kiss him with tongue and lust despite his watering eyes and burning nose, when he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.

“Hello there boys, I baked you some brownies!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know skunks aren't really classified as mustelids anymore. But they were in 1974!


	2. Easter, 1974

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has Nam-mares. Sherlock has a method.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for graphic dream-sequence violence and trauma flashbacks.
> 
> 221B format (221 words exactly, last word must begin with 'b')

_There was no morphine. Un- **fucking** -believable._ Two Bouncing Bettys, two kids who'd _literally_ been torn new assholes, and those Rat Patrol motherfuckers would rather steal morphine from him than buy smack from the village like a decent fucking junkie, _God, ___and the next thing John knew, he was tearing one of those boys up, methodically, yanking out veins and arteries to get that goddamn morphine back.

John's world was rocked by a touch on his mouth — a strange place, gentle. His eyes opened and took in nothing, none of the stillness and wrongness and disorienting not-Namness of the room. But there was a voice.

“You're in Stanger, West Virginia, USA. The date is April 14, 1974, about 0232 hours. Easter Sunday. You left Vietnam 7 months, 8 days, and 4 hours ago.”

John breathed deep. He leaned back against someone else's chest that breathed with him, voice still speaking. “My name is Sherlock Holmes and you've shared my house for 4 months and 22 days. But you know that.”

“I do now, yeah,” John said. “God, those guys. I can _see_ them, Jesus, they're dead.”

“. . . All changed, changed utterly,” Sherlock said.

John cocked his head and smiled at Sherlock, all sleep-mussed in the moonlight. “You erased the solar system, but not Yeats?”

“. . . a terrible beauty is born.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines Sherlock quotes come from [Easter, 1916](http://www.online-literature.com/donne/779/) by W.B. Yeats. A lot of anger and survivor's guilt in that poem.
> 
> I was thinking of the way, in _A Study in Scarlet_ , Watson claims that Holmes's knowledge of literature is nil, and then throughout the rest of the canon that gets undermined when Holmes quotes literature _all the freakin' time._


	3. Stay All Night With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that Vietnam is not John's last source of Nightmare Fuel. Sherlock adapts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Major Character Death in a dream. Spoilers for the way _The Bone Fiddle_ doesn't end, but could have.
> 
> 221B

This time, Jamie was quick with her knife. The first stab took Sherlock in the gut, the second in the chest, and the third, buried to the hilt in his long slim neck. This time it was Sherlock who clutched at himself in shock, his white hands going red with the blood he failed to hold inside. It was Sherlock who slumped backwards into the mine shaft. Turning to John, making John the last sight in his eyes as the light left them, and he fell. 

Jamie pointed the gun at John, herding him towards that dark pit. “You want to be with him,” she said, aiming the revolver between John's eyes. Yes. Yes, John really did. He closed his eyes and waited.

John woke to a tight, strong arm around his waist from behind. A nightmare newer than Nam, and somehow Sherlock _knew,_ and applied a different method. “I know who died in your dream, John. Take whatever proof you need that it was false.”

John shook off sleep with a jerk and a turn, and then was _on_ him, seeking everywhere Sherlock's pulse could be found surging hard: his neck, his chest, that glorious, growing handful between his legs. 

He _knew, ___John thought, almost crying as he buried himself in the strong life force of Sherlock's body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References the same ballad the story does. "Get down, get down, little Henry Lee, and stay all night with me . . ."


	4. Decoration Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What has Sherlock done now? Is it a gift? An apology? A thank-you? Whatever it is, it's a little bit sweet and a little bit morbid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings to speak of, except long-ago offstage NPC death, and memories of graveyard sex. Mature rating. 
> 
> Double 221B format.

_My skills are slipping,_ John thought. At first, he'd known the twists and turns of road, the specific sounds of gravel in certain places, the rush of wind moving through walls of trees sounding so different from the patches of open fields. The dips of valleys, the steep rises of hills, the stomach-twist of switchbacks and the little inner ear-pops of changing altitude. But now, he was lost, well and truly, and the world was dark.

“Do you know where we are, John?” Sherlock asked as the hearse came to a halt.

“Not yet. Can I take the blindfold off?”

“Now, yes.”

John looked around, squinting, at the spring-wakening woods. It looked familiar, but he couldn't place it yet. Sherlock reached in the big bag between them on the front seat, and to John's surprise, pulled out bunches of flowers. He handed one to John and led them down the overgrown forest path.

The vista opened a little, and then John remembered this place: tiny family graveyard, overgrown and half-forgotten, surrounded by encroaching woods. He caught a glimpse of Sherlock's seductive, sidelong smile, and blushed at the memory. _The digging. The broken casket and snapping twigs. The bear. The fear._

There'd been more to Sherlock's game that night than finding a match for the fiddle of bone.

 

***

 

Quickly and adeptly as before, Sherlock leaped the rotting chestnut log and brought John back to the spot they'd excavated months earlier. Now he had more information, and he was spilling it quickly, like automatic gunfire. “Edie Saltire, nee Bedsaul, born January 12, 1900 – died August 27, 1922. Cause of death was postpartum infection following the birth of her second son Virgil. Virgil Saltire is buried two plots down. Died April 4, 1943. Killed in action in the European theatre of World War II. He was Kelly Milligan's fiancé, and it was here, on his grave, that her body was found. Approximately. The graves were not well-marked at the time.”

While he talked, John just stood there boggling, because that last time they'd been here, there hadn't been two new professionally-made gravestones standing there; small and tasteful, fitting the surroundings.

“You're prone to sentiment. I thought you might like it,” Sherlock said.

“Guess we owed her an apology,” John said, looking at the fresh bright flag on Virgil's grave.

_Big break in the case. First taste of Sherlock's mouth. First grasp of his cock, first cries of his lust._ Inappropriate reactions appeared, now as then. John's knees and heart felt soft.

“And a thanks,” Sherlock said, tasting John's mouth again before they laid down their bouquets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Decoration Day" is the original name of Memorial Day. Many Southerners still call it that, and observe it in the [traditional way.](http://digitalheritage.org/2010/08/decoration-day/)


	5. Deck the Hearse and Kiss the Driver (Or Sometimes Vice Versa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John surprises Sherlock for a change. Holiday 221B inspired by the fantastic card Corpsereviver2 sent me!

John had been in medical school and the Army, but even by those standards, this was a labor-intensive prank. It had involved a lot of hiking, scouting, snipping, and one nerve-wracking climb in a high oak tree. He was pleased that none of it was store-bought: the woods on Sherlock’s land had yielded everything he needed.

He’d weathered Sherlock’s piercing study of the scratches, the mud, the surprisingly piney-fresh scent of John’s knapsack. Even if Sherlock figured out what John was up to, he was just going to proceed as if he didn’t live with a super-genius. (But John really hoped he wouldn’t.)

John finally got his chance just a little bit before dawn on December 23rd, when Sherlock had finally succumbed to heavy post-research exhaustion and lay like a snuffling pile of rags on the living-room couch.

When Sherlock at last emerged from sleep and saw John’s handiwork on his vintage hearse, his poleaxed, horrified expression was everything John had hoped for. Pine and spruce and hemlock garlands festooned it, and sharp shiny holly was wedged into every outer crevice.

“You’ve _desecrated_ it!” Sherlock roared.

“Close but not quite the right word. I think it’s festive.”

“Why did you imagine I would tolerate this for a _second?”_

“‘Cause I put the mistletoe inside. In the back.”


	6. The End of the Roads Not Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two VERY DARK glimpse of what might have been, if this version of John and Sherlock had never met. Most of the others are rather light-hearted. These aren't.
> 
> **Warnings: Major character deaths.**
> 
> Take comfort knowing that this is an AU of an AU, and did not really happen, not in this 'verse.

**The War Comes Home With You**   
_Charleston, WV, 1983_

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Captain Watson.”

John barely registered the doctor's touch on his arm. It was intrusive. It was pushy. Why was this man touching him? Bad news was bad enough. Why was he calling him Captain? He wasn't there. He didn't understand.

“Call me John. Please,” John managed to mutter. And he managed to look up at the doctor's face. The man had worked for hours. He was exhausted and overwrought. John understood, he'd been there himself. It's just that there was nothing to say, and so it was better that no one said anything.

“John. Okay. Your son, he - ”

“Didn't make it. Did he?”

“No.”

John closed his eyes. Drew deep breath. Held his stillness as long as he could. “And Mary?”

“We don't know yet. She's still experiencing severe hemorrhaging.”

Oh. That was it then. If she made it, he might. If she didn't, he wouldn't. If he couldn't be a father or a husband, he'd at least be a killer one last time.

The doctor was young. Still a scientist, still trying to explain.

“It happens sometimes, problems with fetal development . . . “

“I know that,” John said coldly. “I'm a doctor too. Paternal chromosome damage. Agent Orange. Spina bifida.”

 

***

**In the Time of the Plague**   
_Washington DC, 1987_

“Do whatever it takes,” Mycroft Holmes said, “ just know that cameras will be on you. The demonstrators will have theirs and we will have ours.”

“So we shouldn't arrest the fags?” asked the Washington police chief.

“If you must. Just make sure we keep control of the narrative . . . oh, never mind. Just don't be cruel, and for God's sake, don't be seen being cruel. We are _long_ past the point where these people have no public sympathy. If you let yourself be seen abusing queers, then you yourself will look weak. Don't let that happen. Keep your men on a tight leash OR ELSE.”

Mycroft took a deep breath. He commanded so much power of perception, and yet even his skills could be so easily undone in the face of real pain. Right now, he truly hated the masters he served and the thugs he commanded.

Mycroft went into the bathroom and changed his clothes and hair and face completely. Then he walked onto the Mall where the AIDS memorial quilt was first unfurled, acres wide and long. With unerring direction and inside information, he found his way to the only patch he cared about – the one with the microscope and magnifying glass, skull and violin, and the name of his baby brother.


	7. Setting the Tone  (a PWP in 5 221Bs)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Year's Eve, '73/'74. John teaches Sherlock a little respect for tradition. By positive reinforcement. 
> 
> OH HEY LOOK THAT RATING JUST WENT UP TO 'EXPLICIT' DID YOU NOTICE THAT?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Year's Traditions - a little rimming, a little anal, a little gun-brandishing, some explosions...

“John, what are you doing? It’s _freezing.”_

“Put more wood on the fire then,” John shouted down the stairs. “And don’t close that door. We’ve gotta let all the bad luck out!” 

Sherlock stood at the bottom wearing that venomous expression he got when he was _personally_ offended by someone’s stupidity. John turned his back on it and went to open windows in the upstairs bathroom and the dusty bedroom they never used. If Sherlock closed them downstairs, there’d be hell to pay.

Instead, John heard stalking, stomping footsteps behind him as he went to the bedroom they did use (very well). As John hoisted the old wooden windows open, a blast of frigid mountain wind howled in. “New Years Eve, Sherlock. Tradition. We’re having ham and cabbage and greens and black-eyed peas tomorrow too, because that symbolizes money, and Mrs. Hudson will probably put silver in the cabbage, so mind you don’t swallow it.”

“Tradition--” Sherlock said, about to launch into a diatribe.

“Hush,” John said. “You’ll like this one. What you’re doin’ at midnight, you’ll be doin’ all the rest of the year.”

Sherlock looked mutinous.

John looked at the clock and grinned. “You know what I wanna do all year. So take off your clothes and get in bed.”

 

***

“It’s too cold for this, John,” Sherlock said, shivering and naked with the quilt around his shoulders.

“Yeah?” John asked as he stripped slowly, refusing to cringe from the chill, watching the movements of Sherlock’s eyes down his body. “Really?” He crawled under the covers and ran his hands over Sherlock’s legs. “You sure?” He lay down on his back.

“Still think so,” Sherlock said as he slowly crept over John, bringing blankets with him to tent over them both.

“Even if I tell you I want you to fuck me?” John asked.

Sherlock sucked in breath sharply with a little hiss. “You really _did_ like it, then,” he all but purred as John slid his feet up the back of Sherlock’s calves.

“Sure did,” John said, rocking up slowly and running his hands up Sherlock’s back. “I ain’t gonna lie, that scared me, the first time you told me - _ah_ -” (Sherlock had begun to move slightly, pressing his cock against John’s, panting roughly) “ - that you like it both ways. Didn’t know if I could handle that. But I could. I can handle you just fine.”

John wanted it bad already, _Christ._

“You handle me _very_ well,” Sherlock groaned into John’s ear, pausing to lick and bite.

***

“Not Vaseline,” Sherlock said, taking hold of John’s wrist and removing the jar. John groaned softly, because he was just waiting for Sherlock to say it: “I don’t like the taste.”

So John knew he’d wind up on his belly gasping and writhing as Sherlock ate him out with shamelessly wet and hungry fervor, and filthy little grunting noises as he fought for breath in the cleft of John’s ass, slick hot tongue working John's hole open. 

John thrust himself against Sherlock’s face, eager to take whatever he could get, and thinking _goddamn, if Sherlock went to work like that on a woman, she might die happy,_ which was a weird thought, but one that almost made him come on the spot, _Christ_ he’d love to watch that someday. “Sherlock, c’mon,” he muttered. “It’s good - I want-”

“What do you want, John?” Sherlock asked, nipping John’s right asscheek hard.

“You- you know - come on, do it.”

“Mmmmm,” Sherlock said into John’s spine as he crept up, kissing all the way with his musky mouth that latched like a leech onto John’s neck, his ear, aiming at his mouth. John just arched his ass up for the feel of Sherlock’s greased cockhead pushing at him, and then _in_ with a stretch and burn.

***

John groaned and pressed up against him, reaching back for Sherlock's leg, to pull him harder in – only the second time he'd done this and he already knew he didn't want Sherlock to be careful or hesitant because that only drew the awkward part out longer. 

Sherlock groaned and molded himself against John's back, driving his cock in deep and moving his hips in lascivious circles as he pinned John's wrists to the bed. “So tight. So hot,” he purred. “I'm not cold anymore, are you?”

“No,” John groaned, humping the mattress and pushing his hips against Sherlock's thrusting weight.

“Doors and windows still open downstairs,” Sherlock murmured as he moved, holding John down. “Anyone could walk in. Anyone could see you like this.”

John shuddered as Sherlock's cock bore down inside him, waves of pleasure filling his pelvis. “They could join in if they want.”

“And if they don't?” Sherlock growled in John's ear.

“Then I'll handle it,” John said, reaching under the pillow where he knew that .38 was kept, and nudged up Sherlock's weight enough to place it on the nightstand.

“How good a shot are you with a cock up your ass?' Sherlock chuckled.

“No idea,” John muttered. “Better than you without one, I bet.”

***

That boast did it for Sherlock, for suddenly he was clutching John around the chest with all the force that was in him – and it was a lot, he was strong – and seizing up with a throaty cry as he shook them both hard.

God, John could _feel_ it, deep inside; he squirmed and moaned, shoulder pinched by Sherlock's teeth. “Man, did you just . . .?” John said fondly. “We've gotta work on your endura— _aaaaa--”_

John's vocabulary shorted out as he was wrenched a little upward to give Sherlock's skillful hand room to work on his cock, pumping and vibrating mercilessly until John came with a broken, breathless shout. The night outside erupted too: celebratory pops and bangs of firecrackers and gunshots. Might have set a vet off in a bad way if he weren't drifting in hormonal bliss beneath Sherlock, who nuzzled him contently.

The grandfather clock downstairs chimed. “Happy New Year, John,” Sherlock murmured, before going tense at a particularly deep explosion. “What was _that?”_

“Sounds like somebody shootin' anvils,” John said sleepily. “Ain't seen that in years. They go up like 100 feet if you do it right.”

“Of course you'll show me how,” Sherlock whispered, smiling against John's shoulder at a few more distant booms.

 

~end

 

Yes, [anvil shooting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_firing) is a real thing! [Helpful how-to video!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhQ4dE_RGnQ)


	8. Lake Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A December snowstorm shortly after their first case together has John in a pensive mood. It's not _sex_ with a man that's the real challenging new frontier.

John shuffled out onto the porch of Sherlock's house in his pajamas and hiking boots. The porchlight was the only artificial illumination; the white in the night sky and the white on the ground reflected each other and cast an eerie, pale light.

It was one of those magical nights when the snow was coming down hard and heavy, but there wasn't a single breath of wind, so every twig on every tree was outlined in white, and the air was heavy with a musical silence. John could _hear_ every flake as it fell.

John breathed it in with his eyes, his whole soul rejoicing. He heard Sherlock coming up behind him, and sighed and settled as Sherlock's hands slid around his belly and drew him close.

“I haven't seen this in years,” John said quietly. Sherlock rested his chin on John's head.

“You missed snow?”

“Yes,” John said, twisting his head around for a kiss, and receiving it.

In that moment he _knew_ – if he'd shared this with a _woman_ he'd been sleeping with for weeks, he'd say it. Three words.

John bit it back – he meant it so much, but had no idea how Sherlock would react. Instead, he reached back to the front of Sherlock's jeans, fondling, and whispered softly, “it's beautiful.”


	9. I'll Fly Away, Oh Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be ready to go is a blessing - to learn how is hardest for the ones left behind. Music helps. 221B format.
> 
> Character death.
> 
> In honor of master mountain musician Dr. Ralph Stanley (February 25, 1927 - June 23, 2016)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a songfic - you'll be wanting this: [I'll Fly Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymF9tRrDX_0)

**Stanger, WV, 2006:**

“I know you don’t believe. I know you don’t feel that. I know what you’re feelin’ really hurts, though,” John said. For just a moment he let his hand rest on the small of Sherlock’s back, stole a glance at those keen green-grey eyes dimmed with unshed tears. Still stunning. Enhanced not diminished by the lines around them and the salt-and-pepper of his brows. “But I think it’ll help to play for her one more time. She never got tired of hearing us.”

Sherlock allowed himself a quiet shiver, and then his mask arose and his spine straightened. Though his heart was breaking, he had a task to see through.

The church was packed, standing room only, but Sherlock and John truly saw only a few people. Martha Hudson herself, asleep in her bed of flowers, and her caretaker Violet Lestrade standing by the casket. Violet’s mother Molly (née Hooper) hugged her and glanced at her husband who waited on the bandstand.

Out of their little band it was John who’d turned out to have the high-lonesome tenor that could wail like winds through tombs. But they kept her favorite old hymn joyous, as she would have wanted: John’s guitar strolling, Sherlock’s fiddle soaring, and Lestrade’s still-nimble fingers leading the charge to heaven on his banjo.


	10. Between Thought and Expression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Between thought and expression lies a lifetime" - the Velvet Underground, "Some Kinda Love."
> 
> Missing scene from [The Bone Fiddle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/573857/chapters/1028448). Takes place between the end of the Chapter 10 and the beginning of Chapter 11 (which only has a few hours between them).
> 
> In which Sherlock contemplates a pumpkin, and fights off panic about just how many of his own rules he broke when he went to bed with John Watson.

_Fine fine fine,_ Sherlock thought, filing through every single word spoken by the late Jamie Rowe. Remarkable for being a young female serial killer, which was uncommon enough to make him think there would have to ripples upon ripples, a much larger matter than one sadistic girl and her loathing for her hometown and her joy in human destruction. Yet focusing directly on it wasn’t going to help at the moment, so he decided now was the best time to address himself to the less bloody but no less intriguing problem of the pumpkin.

He pulled on a blue dressing gown over his naked body, gazing out at the grey stormy morning. The silk slid over his skin enticingly and reminded him of every bruise and scratch and ache he had, every streaking of substances within and without, the dark animal funk of mingled sweat and sexual secretions.

He was tempted to forego the shower and treat Sheriff Lestrade to the full bouquet later.

But, post-pumpkin, he supposed it would be the civilized thing to wash. Pumpkins were messy. And they had a scent of their own that might distract him from thoughts of the naked man in his bed.

 

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ he thought when the pumpkin was blown and starting to burn, pressing seed-laden orange slime to his face.

There was no distracting him from thoughts of the naked man in his bed, who had crawled upwards and passed out on his chest after bringing him to spectacular orgasm with a technically less-than-spectacular blowjob - a bit sloppy, but rewarding in its enthusiasm - and who had fucked him as close to senseless as Sherlock had been since the last time he had Afghani black tar.

How many of Sherlock’s own rules had he broken? Never bring trade home if you can help it. Never show them where you live. Never learn their last names if you don’t need to; if you absolutely must, erase when done. Don’t cruise where you live (don’t shit where you eat).

Sherlock Holmes had bedded many, many men over the years.

But never a neighbor. Never a friend, not since - no, never a friend, not really; in only one case was it debatable. Never anyone who met his . . . people he knew.

Never the same one twice. What would be the point of that?

Why was he still thinking about John Watson?

 

The parts of John’s body he’d had so little time to explore. What the backs of his thighs and the crease of his arse might taste like, feel like under his hands, jiggling with a little slap. How long it would take him to come in Sherlock’s mouth, in his hand, clenched between his thighs - and so many variables to explore under so many different condition: speed, heat, suction pressure, friction, length and intensity of prior foreplay. If (barely-bisexual, women-watching) John truly wanted to learn all the ways of pleasing men . . . of pleasing Sherlock specifically. If John would be willing to put on a show of self-pleasure and let Sherlock observe. If John might be receptive to being receptive. The nape of his neck, the dip of his spine, the swirls and whorls of the bullet scar, the psychosomatically injured thigh that could still spread and lift, wrap around Sherlock and grind against him. The choke of his voice, hitching breaths, whether he would respond to a hand there clutching his neck, whether he would be aroused by binding Sherlock’s wrists, whether he would possibly want more, so much more, as much more as Sherlock wanted if he didn’t tamp his own beast of a sex drive down into its iron cage and only let it run under very specific circumstances...

This was intolerable. If John didn’t wake up horrified at his own indiscretion, if he didn’t flee or even lash out at Sherlock in violent displacement of shame at his own homosexual desires, then Sherlock would be very hard put to get rid of him.

_Disastrous. John met Mycroft, for heaven’s sake. Twice._

And yet . . . he was not going to work very hard on the question of how to get rid of John _(Captain. Doctor.)_ Watson. Instead, he was going to address himself completely to the issue of the pumpkin and why Mrs Hudson’s pies had such chemical perfection. The question of Jamie Rowe, and the question of Dr Watson, would percolate in the subconscious of his mind while he studied the inner alchemy of the largest native squash.

 

_(It was her math professor)_

_(Don’t push him away. Keep him.)_

_(Make coffee. Help him stay.)_

The archaic shower pipes above his head awakened with their usual piercing screech. John hadn’t needed as much sleep as he’d thought, then. Soon he’d be coming down, and then Sherlock would assess his mood in a moment, and he would know how to proceed.


	11. Pacified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets a little payback when Sherlock falls asleep at an inopportune moment. Rated E. 221B format drabble.

“Oh yeah, like that . . . ” John murmured, “slow, so slow -”

It took him a moment to realize that _slow_ had stretched out to downright _still._ He looked down at the dark curls tickling his thigh and felt a line of warm drool leaking down to his balls.

John tried not to shake too hard as he laughed helplessly. Of all the amazing feats of Sherlock Holmes to share with his readers, he wouldn't be able to tell _anyone_ that apparently, if worked to a sufficient state of exhaustion, the great detective had the ability to fall dead asleep with a dick in his mouth. (Not a small one either, thank you very much.)

Very carefully John eased himself out from Sherlock's lax jaws, placed a cushion under Sherlock's head where his thigh had been, and drew the wool afghan over Sherlock's half-clad form. Then he very slowly lifted Sherlock's magnificent hand up to that sleep-sweetened face, and carefully inserted the thumb between his pink lips, which closed around it in childlike reflex.

If John were a completely good man, he might not have given in to temptation. But he was only a _mostly_ good one. And Sherlock's fancy new Polaroid instant camera was _right there._

The woman wasn't the only one who could brandish the power of blackmail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was first written in 2014 and posted to LJ, but not here yet for some reason.


End file.
